How Kirklees Council licenses Huddersfield's dog boarders
Dog boarding, home boarding and day care are licensed activities under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018. Huddersfield's five defined areas actually sit under two licensing authorities: Huddersfield town centre, Lindley & Birkby, Almondbury & Newsome and Holmfirth fall under Kirklees Council, while Brighouse & Elland falls under Calderdale Council, the same council already used for the Halifax pages on this site. Every one of the nine businesses currently listed here is licensed by Kirklees; no Brighouse & Elland business has yet cleared the confirmed-phone bar to publish.
What the Kirklees register shows
Kirklees Council publishes its “Animal Licence Activity Star Rating System” as a PDF, dated 1 September 2026 and refreshed monthly, giving a licence number, trading name, place name, star rating and expiry date for each entry. It does not give an address, phone number or website, so every contact detail published on this site was confirmed independently of the register.
Star ratings, business by business
Three of the nine sit at 5 stars, the top of the scale: Wavy Tails, Khay's Paws and Walkies & Purrfect Mews Cat Hotel. Four sit at 4 stars: Relax & Paws, Crosland Paws, The Dog Den and Chester's House and Gardens. The remaining two sit at 3 stars: Petwatch and Glambullz Boarding. All nine licences currently run until at least 2027, with the latest not expiring until February 2029, so none is shown here as lapsed the way one Halifax business's licence currently is.
More names on the register than are listed here
Kirklees' register lists considerably more animal-boarding, day-care and home-boarding entries than the nine shown on this page, including businesses in other Kirklees towns such as Dewsbury, Batley and Mirfield, which are outside Huddersfield's own defined areas and not shown here. Within Huddersfield's areas, most of the remaining register entries are excluded because no phone number could be confirmed from the business's own site, a Facebook page quoting its own contact details, or another accepted source, not because the licence itself is in doubt. If you cannot find a business you know operates locally, it may hold a current Kirklees licence without yet having a confirmed listing here — the council's own register is the place to check directly.
Reading a star rating
A star rating shown here is a council licence rating from a risk-based inspection, tied to how often the licence is reinspected and how long it runs for; it is not a customer review, so treat it the way you would a food hygiene rating rather than a Google star. Where a business's own website quotes a different star figure than Kirklees' current register, the register is treated as the authoritative figure throughout this page. None of the nine businesses here sit in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, so a star rating is shown for every one; that would not be the case everywhere this directory covers.